Plants of the Gods: S4E1. Richard Evans Schultes and the Search for Ayahuasca
Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation podcast
The Origins of Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca is a woody vine native to the Northwest Amazon. It's also known as copy amongst the tribes of Northwestern Brazil and commonly known as wasca in the rest of Brazil. In 1851, British botanist Richard Spruce stumbled upon an ayahuasca ceremony among the Tucanoan peoples on the Valpez River in northwestern Brazil near the Colombian border. Realizing that this represented a species unknown to science, Spruce named the plant Banisteria copy. The current scientific name is Banisteriopsis copy.
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